At the beginning of 2020 as the number of the first Covid cases increased, the demand for high-end exercise bikes spiked. I imagine you’ve seen one of the Peloton commercials on TV or via social media. Every time I see that commercial of people on that high-end bike with sweats and satisfying smiles and hear the word “peloton” whose literal meaning in French, I learn, is a ball but is used as a group or cluster of bicyclists, I’m reminded of another word, “eschaton.” I had two simple reasons for this Greek term to be evoked. Not only did these words rhyme but also witnessing countless deaths of people due to Covid triggered the thought of the end time. Perhaps my third reason would be that I watched too many end-time movies.
In today’s gospel, Jesus talks about the end time. His friends always seem to raise the question we would like to ask: “When will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” We all want to know in advance if something bad will happen to the world. We want to be prepared. We can recall shortages of water bottles and toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic. Money matters less than material things that are closely linked to our survival and quality of life. Jesus neither teaches us what items to stock up with nor informs us exactly when the end time will take place. His concern is that in the end time his followers will be hated by all because of his name. While Jesus’ description of warnings that might be signs of the end times resonates with our current political situations, the type of persecution due to his name doesn’t sound too relevant to our North American context. This gospel lesson would’ve been read differently after Christianity became the state religion under the reign of Constantine in the 4th century. Those who took Jesus’ teaching of living their lives worthy of his name sought spiritual persecution in the desert rather than religiopolitical persecution. Desert Mothers and Fathers in their spiritual writings talk much about how they win over temptations and persecutions from the devil. For us living in the 21st century, Jesus’ teaching and Desert Mothers and Fathers’ commitment to his teaching regarding the end times challenge us to reimagine and contextualize how we willingly apply the teaching and their examples to our reality. As we see and hear signs of the end times too often, I would like us to focus on the world itself. What is the world that you’re living in with your life? How do you make sense of the world you perceive with your five senses and reasoning? This question is crucial since this is the world that ends eventually. The end of the world at the most personal level is the end of our individual lives. Then let’s look into this process of making sense of our own world more specifically. We fabricate the world based on various information we receive through our senses. This can be easily demonstrated if we consider how differently we remember things even when we look at, say, the same painting. About seven years ago, there was a heated debate over the colors of the dress. For some, it was blue with black lace fringe whereas, for others like me, it definitely was white with gold lace fringe. What this debate reveals to us is how our perceptual boundaries differ. The reason for the difference is which side of the brain is more developed: for those who see it in blue and black, it’s their right side of the brain is more developed while for those who perceive it in white and gold it’s their left side of the brain. We take all this information through our senses for granted and believe (or trick ourselves) without knowing what we’re doing that the world we perceive is the world as it is. But the truth is that we don’t have sense organs that can see the world as it is. For example, in our conversation with others, what we feel like hearing right now is already passed. Think about thunder. We can see lightning immediately but it takes the sound of thunder about 5 seconds to travel a mile. By the time we hear its sound, it’s all gone in the past. There’s a cognitive gap. This cognitive limitation that we don’t usually pay attention to gives us a new insight into how we create our own world(s). To see through this fabrication of the world we constantly take for granted as though it is the actual world out there is a way to end that world. No reason to be afraid of the end time. This cognitive and also spiritual recognition of how we create our worlds helps us see how our world begins and ends. We are then humbled to embrace that what we think the world is isn’t everything. We may be very wrong about many things in the world we live in together as well as many issues we are fixated on. What this also allows us to do is to see things, people, and ourselves anew. If we hold onto living in our fixated version of the world, we will always have to make up our minds to prepare our defense. This isn’t what Jesus tells us in the lesson. Instead, he directs us to “make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” The end time or the end of the world may be not something that we are to fear and prepare for the worst. Instead, practicing to end a world may be our Christian attitude to the world. Keeping in mind that we make sense of the world as we perceive and fabricate, we make ourselves constantly open to the vision of God who is ever present and is the very source of goodness itself. Our spiritual practice of ending a world is in other words our yes to the Kingdom of God in our hearts and our no to the world that is filled with suffering and pain. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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